


Two of a Kind

by AvaBlook (AvaTaggart)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Clones, Gen, Sharing a Body, Sharing a Brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 10:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15022349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaTaggart/pseuds/AvaBlook
Summary: When Allura put Shiro into the clone's body, she didn't think to check if it was actually empty first. Surprise, it wasn't!Now Shiro is sharing a brain--and a body--with the clone that's been living his life while he was dead. There ought to be some resentment there, maybe, but there isn't. It's hard to hate someone who was just doing their best to be you, after all.Set right after the end of season 6, Kuron and Shiro are together in their head and sharing Kuron’s body.





	Two of a Kind

**Author's Note:**

> I fucking loved season 6, it reignited my love for Voltron, and I just HAD to write this. Allura, you jerk, Kuron was a person too!

When he woke up, the first thing Shiro knew was pain.

Bruises across his body, the occasional stabbing pain from the base of his prosthetic arm, and a headache that felt like his brain was tearing in two all added up to have him groaning and pressing his remaining hand against his forehead in an attempt to relieve the headache. But still, he couldn’t help but smile. When he’d died, he’d expected to be gone, or stuck in the Astral Plane forever. He’d never thought he’d ever be in a body again, _his_ body again.

He owed Allura more than he could ever express to her.

Shiro removed his hand from his forehead in favor of pushing himself up into a sitting position and trying to take in his surroundings. Instead of the barren planet where he’d briefly awoken, or the Castle’s medbay, be seemed to be in the back of the Black Lion’s cockpit, lying on a makeshift pile of blankets. The cockpit itself was empty, and the Black Lion stationary.

Shiro winced as his headache spiked, reaching a peak and then tapering off, thankfully subsiding down into almost nothing.

But then he heard a thought that _wasn’t his_.

 _Where’s Keith?_ The panicked thought came. _He was hurt. Is he okay? How did I get here?_

 _What the quiznack is going on?_ Shiro wondered. _Is Haggar’s control over this body still in effect?_

Shiro’s body startled at the thought, as if it was a separate entity reacting to his thoughts.

“That’s weird,” he heard himself mutter, without ever intending to say the words himself.

“Okay, this is really weird,” he muttered, on purpose this time, and again, his body startled.

“What is going on?” he heard himself ask.

He was sure he looked crazy, having a conversation with himself. But he wasn’t! Somehow, someone else’s thoughts were in his head, and they were moving his body.

Shiro forced himself to stand. He needed to find the others, wherever they were. He needed their help.

What was _wrong_ with him?

* * *

The Black Lion, along with all the other Lions, was resting in a field on an apparently uninhabited and grassy planet. The others were gathered around a fire Coran was tending, trying to cook some kind of unfamiliar vegetable on a spit above it.

“Shiro!” Keith called out, rushing over as Shiro made his way unsteadily down the ramp to the ground. His legs felt like they were stepping a moment before or after he wanted them to, or on time but still somehow leaving him thrown off balance. It was like they were getting two different sets of instructions on when and where to step, and couldn’t manage to balance them.

That was probably exactly what was happening, considering the stranger in his head.

 _Look,_ you’re _in_ my _head, ok?_ came an unexpected thought, and Shiro stumbled, only to be caught by Keith and Lance.

“Thanks, guys,” his voice said, without his prompting. It was really starting to freak him out, his body moving without him telling it to.

  _I’m pretty freaked out too, you know,_ came the thought in his head. He _really_ hoped someone would know what was going on here and how to fix it.

“Are you alright, Shiro?” Lance asked. “You seem kind of... shaky.”

“Are you sure you should be up and about yet, Shiro?” Allura asked, walking up to the group.

Shiro’s head shook without his say so, but he spoke to the princess himself.

“I’m not sure I should be up yet, Princess, but… something’s not quite right with me.”

“Not right? In what way is something not right?” Keith asked, clearly worried, and Shiro internally winced at the sight of the scar still fresh across his cheek.

 _How did he get that?_ the voice in his head asked.

“There are… thoughts in my head that aren’t mine,” he said.

“My body’s moving without me wanting it to,” he heard himself say.

The others tensed at that, worried expressions barely winning out over fear.

“Could Haggar still have control of the body?” Allura asked.

“I think she was controlling him through the arm,” Keith said. “But if that’s not the case… if she still has control…”

“It’s not Haggar,” Shiro said. “It’s not trying to get me to hurt you guys, or anything. It’s... almost like my own voice, actually. Not evil, just… different.”

There was silence as the others thought it over. Shiro realized that it wasn’t just Allura who’d come over to talk to him, but the whole group. Pidge was muttering under their breath, and the Galra woman— _Krolia_ —looked uneasy.

“Hey, guys, Haggar wasn’t controlling the clone the _whole_ time, was she?” Hunk asked. “After all, she couldn’t have been the one playing ‘Monsters and Mana’ with us, or training, or stuff like that. I mean, Haggar’s a busy person, she doesn’t have time to micromanage a Trojan horse for a month. The clone was only evil at the very end, and _that_ was her, but before that, he was autonomous, right?”

“That makes sense,” Pidge said. “Put some kind of default, non-suspicious behavior program in place and wait to take over only when you need to.”

“In that case, did anyone ever check that the clone was for sure out of the body before Shiro went in?” Lance asked.

Silence fell over the group again, but this time, it was far tenser, as they realized what this meant. Shiro felt dread build within him, both his own and foreign.

The clone’s dread. Or was he the clone?

No, no, he had memories of the astral plane, watching what his body did under the clone’s control. The other in his body, though, could find no such assurance, carding through their memories with increasing panic.

 _There was a clone of me? One that turned evil? But when could he have gotten onto the Castle? Oh no._ Oh no. _Is it_ me? _Am I the clone? I can’t be! I’m Shiro, I’m the Black Paladin, the leader, I can’t be imagining all this!_

 _Calm down,_ Shiro thought. _It’ll be okay._

_No! I hurt the team. They’ll never be able to trust me again, will they?_

_We’ll figure it out,_ Shiro reassured the clone.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Allura said. “It was based on something I learned on Oriande. I didn’t know if it would work, let alone the results. I shouldn’t have rushed into something like that. Shiro, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, princess,” Shiro reassured her.

“Is it really the clone in there with you?” Pidge asked.

“Right now, it seems that way,” Shiro said. “Except, uh--”

“Except what?” Keith demanded, tears at the corners of his eyes.

“He didn’t know he was a clone,” Shiro said. “He only figured it out just now.”

“Oof,” Hunk said. “That’s… not great.”

The voice in Shiro’s head laughed mirthlessly. It seemed to be done trying to take over his—their body for now, making no attempt to speak aloud again. Shiro could feel the other’s emotions: guilt, shame, fear.

 _How did I not know I was the clone? I hurt the team, I hurt_ Keith _. I should have realized, I should have_ done _something!_

 _Done what, exactly?_ Shiro asked. _They believed you were me, because you believed you were me. You had my memories. There’s no way you could have known._

“So what should we do?” Hunk asked, breaking Shiro and the other in his head out of what Shiro guessed would be a never-ending fight.

Shiro was the leader. He should have known what to do. _We should know the answer to this._

But he didn’t even know what this _was_. He hadn’t expected to come back from the Astral Plane at all, much less to come back to something like this. What was the right thing to do? What _could_ they even do?

“I don’t know,” Shiro said.

“I don’t know what to do,” he heard himself say.

* * *

They weren’t battling for control, at least.

Shiro had full control over the body, unable to be pushed away from the controls, because Allura had given it to him.

The other Shiro also had full control over the body, because before it was theirs, it was his.

This made things quite a bit harder when they both tried to do something at once, which, given the similarity of their thoughts, was quite often.

They had their fair share of stumbles, early on, when one tried to walk at a different pace than the other. Luckily they hadn't been hurt too badly, and hadn't taken anyone else out with them, but still, it was a bit embarrassing.

Worse still was when they tried to talk at the same time, and a choked garble came out of their mouth. They'd freaked themselves out with that one, the first time, and then freaked Hunk and Pidge out by accident later.

In general, things went better when they weren't both controlling the body at the same time. They fell into a habit without really discussing it: when they were sitting, or lying down, or otherwise just chilling, neither of them was really in control. Whoever wanted to do something first would grab the controls and the other would sit back and let him do it. They warned each other mentally first, though it didn't take much warning when they could hear each other's thoughts.

The clone was hesitant to take control, more than willing to let Shiro take over, even when Shiro knew he had something to say, or something he wanted to do. It was... worrying, to put it mildly. It was like since he'd learned he was a clone, he'd decided he didn't deserve the life he'd made with the Paladins, didn't even deserve his own body.

Allura just dumping Shiro into the body without knowing if the clone was still in there hadn't helped, of course. What also didn't help was the way the others treated them.

There wasn't really a way for anyone to talk to one of them without the other also hearing, but Hunk always felt the need to ask which of them he was talking to, hesitant to talk to the clone instead of Shiro. Lance asked the other Shiro a lot of uncomfortable, probing questions about what he remembered of being a Galra prisoner ( _almost nothing_ ), whether Haggar could still control him ( _I don't know_ ), whether he had really cared about the team ( _of course I did!_ ). Allura apologized every time she saw them, though Shiro got the feeling she intended the apology for him alone. Pidge had been alright, until they'd asked about taking a look at the remains of his arm to try to reverse-engineer the mind control, which neither Shiro wanted to be replicated, ever. Coran had taken to calling them 'number one' exclusively, avoiding the issue of telling them apart by not even trying to distinguish them.

And Keith... Keith was distant.

He had every right to be, of course. Shiro had been dead for months, and the clone had tried to kill Keith, tried to kill the whole team. Shiro saw flashes of it in their shared nightmares, sometimes. He couldn't imagine how terrible it had been to be in Keith's position for that fight.

But it still hurt, to see the brother who'd fought so hard to save them barely able to make eye contact.

He tried not to dwell on it. Keith would come to Shiro when he was ready. He preoccupied himself with recovery and learning to work with his clone inside his head and planned for reaching Earth.

He’d gone months without Keith, in the Astral Plane. He could last a few more weeks.

* * *

Their body wasn't exactly the same as Shiro’s had been. The longer Shiro was in it, he more things he noticed.

There was the white hair, for starters, unfamiliar to both of them. Hunk had told them it had happened when Allura put Shiro into the clone's body. It took him a second to recognize himself in mirrors, at first, the shock of white so unfamiliar to him.

Most of the differences were smaller, small enough that no one but Shiro himself could tell the difference. The soreness in his joints was less intense, since the clone hadn’t ever actually gone through Garrison basic training or fought in the Galra arena. His wrist felt a bit stiffer, never forced to do the work of two. When Hunk and Pidge peeled the remains of the Galra arm off his shoulder, the scarring was fresher, and healed in a different pattern than Shiro remembered from his own body.

Lots of scars were different. The smallest ones were all missing, no trace left from falling off his bike on a gravel street when he was seven or nicking his arm on a misplaced sword from the arena. The scar Haggar's wound had left on his torso was healed differently, ever so slightly off.

And there was a new scar, huge and raw, on his left thigh. He didn't want to ask the other Shiro about it, but his curiosity bled through their shared mind anyway.

 _When I was escaping from the Galra ship, my pod crashed,_ the other Shiro thought. _I got wounded by the crash and... cauterized the wound, with my arm, once I escaped._

Shiro recoiled at the statement, filled with horror at the idea of what the other had needed to do, imagining the pain of his arm’s white-hot plasma against his own skin. The other took it the wrong way, shrinking back, curling their shared body up, hiding his face in his knees.

"Hey," Shiro said. "I'm sorry, that that happened to you. You didn't deserve it."

"Better than what happened to you," the other said. "I deserve my fate more than you deserve yours."

"That's not true," Shiro said, but the other brushed him off.

_You led the others, made them a team. I hurt them, almost killed them._

_You didn't want to,_ Shiro reassured him.

 _But I hurt them anyways,_ the other thought.

 _No, you didn't_ , Shiro thought. _There's too much of this self-blame on this team, and I'm sick of it. Haggar is the one that hurt the team. She took over your body to use you. She probably could have taken over mine, if she'd gotten a hold of me before I died. You didn't ask for any of this._

There was a pause, as the other thought it over.

"Thanks," the other finally said, the fight gone out of him. He had accepted Shiro’s words, however reluctantly. “I can see why the others all think you're a good leader.”

* * *

Allura pulled them aside a few days after Shiro reawoke.

"I am truly sorry for the position I have put you in, Shiro," she said.

"Please, princess, don't apologize," Shiro said. "You saved our lives; that's what's most important."

"Right..." Allura said, discomfort clear in her voice. "Still, the position you're in is not ideal."

"Not exactly, no," Shiro said. The other him wasn’t bad company, but he missed solitude, sometimes, or at least not having someone else overhear his every thought.

"I've been reflecting on the technique I used to transfer your consciousness from the Black Lion into your current body," Allura said. "I think that I could replicate it, to draw the clone's mind out of your own."

His body to himself, no more confused identity, the chance to be alone—it was tempting, to be sure. But Shiro got the feeling there was something Allura wasn't telling him.

"And where would he go?" Shiro asked. Allura fidgeted—hiding something for sure, then.

"It would be possible," she began. "For me to let his soul dissolve into the aether. It would not be dissimilar to dying, I think."

"So you want to kill him, and have me keep his body," Shiro said.

"I wouldn't word it so indelicately, but in essence, yes," Allura said.

He and the other spoke at the same time, their words tangled, and Shiro paused to let the other make his case.

 _You should do it,_ the other thought. _You've been so nice to me, the whole team has, but they don't really trust me. I don't really belong here. You should have the chance at getting your life back, Shiro._

To which, Shiro responded: _Bull. Shit._

"I'm going to have to decline, princess," Shiro said. "This body was his before it was ever mine, and if one of us should be booted out of it, it should be me. I died, Allura. I got more time than I should have, staying in the Astral Plane, and now, living in this body. If one of us needs to die, it should be me."

Allura frowned, at that, but she didn’t argue with him.

 _What are you doing?_ the clone asked. _This is your chance! I already said I'm okay with it!_

 _I know,_ Shiro said. _But_ I'm _not._

* * *

It took Shiro a little while to place what about the other was so familiar (well, familiar in a different way than being so similar to Shiro himself). But there was something about the way he was so willing to give up on himself, the way he didn’t seem to care for his own future, that made Shiro cry out to help him. He’d felt this way before.

But last time, it had been towards Keith.

Keith, who had gone from the angry, sullen kid who couldn’t seem to tolerate anyone but Shiro to the self-assured leader of Voltron. From the problem kid to pilot of the Black Lion. Shiro wasn’t sure how much of that was his help and how much was Keith’s own doing, but still, Keith was so much better off than he’d ever thought he would be. Shiro couldn’t just stand by and watch as the clone threw away his chance at life as Keith had tried to do.

And there was the problem: Shiro couldn’t keep calling him ‘the clone’, which was rude if not outright mean, or ‘the other Shiro’, which got confusing really fast. But there was nothing else he knew to call the other by.

“You need a name,” he said one day. The two had been left to themselves for a few hours while the others visited a local trading post. He needed rest, still, Allura said, and Shiro hadn’t complained.

 _You could call me Kuron,_ the other thought. _That’s what the Galra called me, I think: Project Kuron._

It took Shiro a second to remember what the word meant, and he winced internally when he did.

 _That’s not any better than just calling you ‘clone’,_ he pointed out.

 _It’s a place to start, at least,_ the other thought.

 _Not a good place,_ Shiro thought. _Names aren’t supposed to be painful._

 _Sorry, it’s all I’ve got,_ the clone said, a familiar tone of black humor bleeding through. _Do you have a better idea?_

 _What about… Ryou?_ Shiro suggested.

“What?” the other spoke, startled. “But… that’s what Mom and Dad were going to name ou--your twin.”

“You’re pretty much a twin to me,” Shiro said. “Same age, kind of, and we sure look the same,” he chuckled, but got serious again.

“It’s kinda fitting, isn’t it, if it winds up being used how they intended it? Albeit twenty-something years late.” _Man, how long has it even been on Earth?_

His musings were interrupted by the feeling of tears tracking down his cheeks.

 _Is it really that bad a suggestion?_ he asked the other.

“What? No, it’s fine,” the other said, wiping the tears away with his hand. “I’m just… happy, that you’d think of me so highly.”

 _Of course I do,_ Shiro thought _. You took care of the team when I couldn’t. You care about them as much as I do. You know how much I care about the team, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re as much a part of the team as anyone._

 _And it doesn’t hurt that you never argue with me about my taste in music,_ he joked, and the other laughed.

“Ryou,” the other said, trying the name out in their mouth. He smiled. “I think that would be nice.”

* * *

The team took to the news of Ryou’s name about as well as could be expected; the Garrison trio seemed accepting enough, Allura was hesitant but didn’t argue, Coran cheerfully acknowledged it and kept right on calling him ‘number one’, and Keith… well, Keith bristled a bit. He knew Shiro well enough to know the significance of the name, should by all rights have known what Ryou meant to Shiro, for him to take that name, and yet he still tried to avoid them.

Enough was enough. Shiro wanted to get to the bottom of this.

He caught Keith alone (well, as alone as they could be, anymore) around the campfire one night. Shiro had volunteered to stay up and watch the camp, and the others had gotten tired of telling him no. Keith snuck down the ramp of the Black Lion; to do what, Shiro wasn't sure.

"Can't sleep?" Ryou asked on instinct, wincing as Keith looked at them and handing the controls over to Shiro.

"Which one of you asked that?" Keith asked, but he didn't seem hostile. More... burnt out.

"Ryou," Shiro said.

"Ah," Keith said, sitting down on the ground beside them. "Does that mean he’s the one in control right now?"

"No, he handed it over when you gave him that look,” Shiro answered, honestly. "He can still hear us, though."

"Right..." Keith said. He started nervously fidgeting with his knife, twirling it between his fingers loosely.

"I'm sorry," he finally said.

"What for?" Shiro asked.

"A lot of things," Keith said. "Not realizing you were in Black. Not realizing he wasn't you. Getting you two stuck in the same body."

"Keith," Shiro said, interrupting Keith's speech. "It's alright. You couldn't have done any better."

"But I should have!" Keith cried out. "I messed up, big time, a whole bunch of times, and now I can't even talk to my own brother without a stranger there, because he's always in your head!"

"Technically, I'm the one in his head,” Shiro said. “And also, he isn't exactly a stranger, is he?"

"Not like I spent much time with him," Keith grumbled. "I ran off with the Blade while he was leading Voltron."

"That's not what I was talking about," Shiro said.

Keith looked pointedly at the ground for a minute, turning his knife over and over and over in his hands.

"He acts like you!" Keith finally burst out. "He's so much like you, okay? Even when he was attacking me, I thought it was you, I thought I could save you from it. He's so much like you I can't even tell you two apart, and I hate it! You're my brother, Shiro, so why can't I tell you apart from him?"

"I don't think even _I_ could tell us apart, if I didn't have him in here with me," Shiro said, chuckling a bit. "I wouldn't ask that from you, Keith. Me and Ryou... we're almost the same person. We have so much of the same past, the same memories, how could we not be? I don't know if that will change, but it's the case for right now. So maybe, instead of trying to figure out which of us is your brother and which isn't.... you could just think of it as having two brothers?"

Keith sniffled, and Shiro saw for the first time the tears spilling down his cheeks, gleaming in the firelight. Without thinking, both of them leaned over to hug him in unison.

"You saved me, Keith," Ryou said. "I don't want to ask something of you that you're uncomfortable with, but to me, you've always been my brother."

Keith choked a sob and reached over, returning their hug with surprising strength.

"I'm so glad you're alive," he said. "Both of you."

* * *

Matt met up with the Paladins again when they were just over three-quarters of the way to Earth. The Black Lion got the communication ping, and Keith opened it up for everyone to see.

"Matt! You got my message!" Pidge called out before anyone else could get a word in, and sure enough, there was Shiro’s fellow crew member and, later, prisoner, albeit a little older, and wearing a rebel spacesuit instead of a prisoner uniform.

 _Matt’s alive? And free? We found him?_ He wondered, taking in the sight of his friend alive and well.

"When did we find Matt?" he asked Keith, keeping his voice quiet enough to not draw Matt’s attention.

"Don't ask me," Keith answered, equally quiet.

 _Oh, right, you two weren't here for that,_ Ryou said _. I'll fill you in later._

"Yeah, I got your message, and I came as soon as my mission was over," Matt said. "I didn't really believe the Castle ship could just be... gone, though. It's too bizarre even for me."

"Oh, that is just the tip of the bizarre iceberg, believe me," Lance said.

"I can't wait to hear about it," Matt said. "Any chance we could touch down on one of these planets to catch up? My ship can't quite keep up with the Lions for very long."

"Of course," Keith said, already adjusting the controls to steer the Black Lion towards the nearest planet. "See you on the ground."

Matt’s ship was tiny compared to the Lions. Pretty much any ship was, Shiro figured, but it was still odd to see.

"I was really hoping that the Castle being destroyed was some kind of horrible joke," Matt said, slinging an arm around Pidge. "You got my stuff off the ship?"

"All that junk you left behind?" Pidge teased. "Yeah, I got it. It's in Green, if you want to collect it. Storage space is kind of at a premium right now."

"I bet," Matt said, finally paying some attention to the other Paladins and their passengers.

"Whoah, Shiro, what happened to your hair? And your arm?" he asked, torn between worry and curiosity.

"Bit of a long story," Shiro said.

"Oh, I've got time," Matt said. "When Pidge said you guys were heading to Earth, I told my leader I'd be joining up with you, and not participating in any missions until I got back. I'm kind of on vacation." He grinned, and Shiro felt himself smiling in response to the familiar, lopsided grin.

"Alright,” Shiro said. “The gist of it is: I died and got stuck inside the Black Lion, got replaced by a clone—that’s the version of me you met, by the way—, Haggar took control of the clone through my prosthetic arm so Keith cut it off, and then Allura got me out of the Black Lion and into the clone’s body. Alongside him. So, uh, you've already met him, but you both thought he was me at the time, and he’s got his own name now."

Shiro gave up control of the body, leaving Ryou to offer his hand.

"I'm Ryou," he said, "It's good to see you again, Matt."

Matt laughed nervously.

"Is this 'let’s prank Matt' day or something? Are you guys actually hiding the Castle somewhere and just trying to get a reaction?" Matt asked, looking around at the other Paladins for the expected smirk of watching someone react to a prank. But the other others' faces were serious, even Pidge's.

Keith stepped forward to stand beside Ryou, ready to support him in case Matt lashed out, and he appreciated the gesture.

“Oh, geez,” Matt said. “This is for real?”

Shiro nodded. Matt laughed humorlessly.

“We’ve been through some pretty messed-up stuff in space, but this takes the cake. Lance, you weren’t kidding,” Matt said.

“What can I say?” Lance said. “We’re a pretty messed-up bunch.”

“Right…” Matt said. “Sorry for how I reacted, Ryou. This is just… well, I wasn’t expecting it, for sure.”

“Me either, honestly,” Shiro joked.

“Still. Good to see you again, despite all… that,” Matt said.

“Thanks,” Shiro said. “It’s good to see you too.” 

* * *

They spent the last night before arriving on Earth in the Lions. There were no other habitable planets nearby, and they wanted everyone to be awake and alert to prepare for the inevitable mess that their return to Earth would be. Shiro and Ryou were with Keith in the Black Lion, and despite admonishing the other boy to sleep, they were still awake. Shiro kept trying to plan out what he would say tomorrow, running through the kinds of questions people would ask, the answers he would give them.

Ryou was quiet, giving him time to focus, he figured. Ryou's thoughts were a low, vague buzz in the back of their shared mind, leaving Shiro free to figure out how he could describe the existence of aliens so that people would listen to him.

"How are you taking this all so well?" Ryou whispered under his breath, careful not to wake Keith up. Still, Shiro startled a little.

 _What do you mean?_ he asked.

 _I mean, we're sharing a body, a mind. That's not normal, but you're acting like it's no big deal,_ Ryou thought. _Everyone else was freaked out by it, but you just… rolled with it. How?_

Shiro chuckled, keeping quiet so he wouldn't wake Keith, but he couldn't help it.

_Ryou, I got kidnapped and tortured by aliens, fought to save the universe in a sentient robot lion that turns into a knight, mind-melded with a bunch of teenagers, and died and got stuck on another plane of existence. My life is already so goddamned weird that sharing a body with you isn't even on my top ten weirdest things to happen. And it's one of the good things, too; you're not trying to kill me, or anyone else, so why freak out about it?_

_Wow,_ Ryou thought. _I hadn't thought of it that way. You're right, this is the least messed-up of all the messed-up things to happen to us._

 _See?_ Shiro said. _We've already been through way worse before. I can sure as hell get through this; after all, I've got you to help._


End file.
